Some things. Her Uncle Van's best friends who saved his life are Tayledras. They're in bad bad trouble now, they tried to murder Leareth who everyone used to think was evil but actually he helped Uncle Van win the war against Hell, so he's good even if he isn't Good-with-a-capital-G like they talk about here. Anyway Mama had to go to all sorts of meetings with Papa about it because they were trying to do a murder investigation and decide whether it was their fault or whether the Star-Eyed Goddess made them do it. Jisa isn't really supposed to know any of these things but she's very clever, see, so she finds them out anyway. 

(She's also quite good at listening behind doors. And at reading thoughts, even some of the Heralds don't shield her out all the time. She doesn't say that though because it's naughty of her to do that and Mama would yell, and she doesn't want the nice wizard lady to yell at her or tell her mama.) 

That's so impressive! Leareth is here in Cheliax now though Carissa hasn't met him (has tried obsessively to avoid crossing paths with him). Why'd people used to think he was evil?

Jisa doesn't actually know that much because most people won't talk about it with her, but after the war more people knew about Leareth. She thinks maybe he was going to have a war with Valdemar? Except then he didn't, instead he took his army to Cheliax and helped Uncle Van.

She thinks he did other bad things because there've been a lot of Dark Meaningful Grownup Looks about it, but no one told her. (And they were all Heralds who had good shields so she couldn't read it either.)

It's so frustrating when people won't tell you things. With magic she could pretend to be a grownup and then people'd tell her more things, probably, but that's a hard spell, it'll take years of practicing. 

Can Velgarth magic tell whether things are dead or alive? She saw some Velgarth mages notice once that a plant was dead even though it still looked all right on the outside and she didn't know how they did it.

Ooh, yes, if you have mage-sight like Uncle Van does then all living things glow a little bit with an aura of life-force. She asked him a lot of questions about it when he was teaching her how to shield her Empathy and Mindspeech, that was all the way back when she was six. Jisa is jealous that he's a mage and she isn't, he said she has it in potential but that it wouldn't awaken and that isn't FAIR.

Jisa can only see people's auras, and her Empathy picks up a little bit from animals but Animal Mindspeech is a different Gift and Jisa doesn't have it, which also isn't fair. Jisa can see Carissa's aura, though, and tell her that it's purple, and - oooooooh she has a cactus that has feelings!!! That's so cool!!! Where did she get it, are there cactus pet shops here, can Jisa get one too??? 

 - oh, it's her familiar, wizards can have familiars, and the familiar borrows a little bit of the wizard's intelligence. However, wizards keep it a secret who or what their familar is, so Jisa mustn't tell anyone, all right?

Jisa will absolutely keep her secret. (She loooooves knowing secrets and it's not like she can tell her parents about any of the magic anyway.) Can the cactus talk? 

Only powerful wizards (sex!) can do that. Carissa would love to teach her more sometime but (Glibness is wearing off) she was going to get dinner with her cousin, maybe they can do this again sometime if Jisa did a good job of keeping this a secret so Carissa doesn't get in trouble.

All right! Jisa thanks her again, in her best Serious Grownup Voice, for the cantrip, and then thinks to asks her when her next day off is, and then hugs her around the middle again and skips off. 

She does not, in fact, tell anyone about Carissa the laundry wizard. Keeping secrets is haaaaaard but she really really doesn't want her parents to stop her from going back and learning more magic. 

Carissa the laundry wizard lies on her bed and has a panic attack for half an hour and then carefully writes down all the things she now knows about Leareth and about Velgarth magic.

Then she starts working on a design for a new amulet of nondetection that seems like it ought to give the impression that there are an appropriate and unremarkable amount of life energies. 

Batty says that it doesn't want to be a spy again even if she pulls it off. Carissa agrees that being a spy seems terrible but it is their duty to Cheliax, right now, apparently, and worst case they'll go to Axis, Aroden had the people who died fighting against him in the war resurrected because he dislikes Hell so much. Batty points out that they don't strictly speaking know if plant familiars get an afterlife. Carissa...hadn't thought of that, and it's kind of too many things on the stack of things to think about, but she says she'll keep it in mind. 

Urtho spends several days talking to magic researchers and asking questions about magic in the new world and reading books about magic and trying very hard not to think about the rest of the situation, because every time he tries he feels like he's floundering, in over his head, and has no idea what to do. 

Eventually, though, he tells one of the pharaoh's researchers that he wants know more about what the broader geopolitical situation is, here, and what's going to be expected of him (or done to him regardless of his cooperation, but he doesn't say that.) And also he would ideally like some way to verify that what people are telling him is the truth, not because he thinks they'll lie to him, he means no offence, just, they have to understand it's a very weird implausible situation he's in right now. 

'Wants' is also something of a lie, but he does feel that if he's trying to be responsible here, he should be asking about these things. 

That's super reasonable! If he knows truth magic himself he's welcome to cast it on them, or they can try to walk him through the local spell well enough he can see what it does but that'll probably be difficult, even with how quickly he has picked things up.

Their understanding is that the pharaoh hopes he'll choose to settle in Osirion and do magic research here on useful ways to combine the magic of the two worlds and so on, but he'll certainly have no trouble finding a sponsor anywhere else in the world he wants to go. The geopolitical situation is that Aroden's army conquered Cheliax pretty recently and everyone's still reeling from that, and from interworld contact, but now that the Worldwound's closed and Cheliax is no longer in the hands of Hell there aren't any pressing disasters anywhere.

He does have truth magic and he wants to ask someone who knows the part about Ma'ar to tell him all of that under his truth spell, and then he might ask more about Osirion and about Cheliax. (Osirion doesn't look corrupt so far but he's aware he's only seen a tiny slice of it.) 

The pharaoh's magical researchers were all present when Ma'ar showed up at the palace with a plan to help Aroden's (they didn't know it was Aroden at the time) conquest of Cheliax and they know a little bit about his relationship with Vanyel and Valdemar before that (he was planning to invade, but changed his mind), and they know he's spent much of the intervening two millenia on magical research because he shared a bunch of it with them. 

They can also answer questions about Osirion and Cheliax! Osirion is ruled by the pharaoh; the pharaohs of Osirion have historically been either minor gods in their own rights or aspects of major gods, and the current dynasty of pharaohs are aspects of Abadar, god of cities and wealth and trade. Osirion is not one of the richest or most powerful countries in the Inner Sea - it was, thousands of years ago - but most people make Axis. 

Cheliax was ruled by Hell after a horrible civil war when Aroden died (he got better), and almost all its people were damned. It's a big country, though, and very prosperous; the most powerful player in the region and arguably in the world. 

This is mostly incredibly confusing! Urtho never had the best head for geography and his mind is reeling with all the unfamiliar country names, from two different worlds no less. 

What's Aroden like - is he a good ruler? Also is there any sign Ma'ar is trying to overthrow him to take over Cheliax? That's what he was afraid Ma'ar would do in the first country where he ended up as advisor to a King. 

Aroden's a very good ruler who has been relentlessly focused on trying to fix the institutional situation that got almost everyone damned and give them all the chance to atone and also keep the country as prosperous as it was when there were lots of slaves from Hell paying for it.

There are no signs of Ma'ar trying to overthrow him which would in any event be a ridiculously difficult thing to do because Aroden is, well, technically not a god anymore but he turned everyone in a hundred mile radius to stone at the start of the war, and closed the Worldwound, and transported thirty thousand Chelish soldiers to Nirvana, and at some point you're only technically not a god, you know?

What about the pharaoh of Osirion, who raised him from the dead and is maybe an aspect of Abadar? (He seemed like a person to Urtho, if a very impressive one.) What sort of ruler is he? 

He's an exceptional diplomat and negotiator. Osirion has been prosperous. It's not widely known Osirion backed Aroden in the Chelish war, since Osirion usually stays out of wars, but they sure came out of it in an advantageous position.

He worked with Ma'ar, then. Did they seem to get along well? 

They're quite close, yes.

Do they think the pharaoh might have a biased perspective of how much Ma'ar has reformed since the time Urtho knew him, if they're friends now? 

Their impression is that the pharaoh was not sure of him initially but then Abadar offered to take him as His servant and Ma'ar accepted, which couldn't have happened if Ma'ar wasn't suited in his soul to Abadar's service, gods can't be wrong about that sort of thing.

- Wait, Ma'ar has sworn service to a god? Urtho is baffled, that doesn't sound like him at all, he defied all the gods' precepts before.

Well, it seems like the Velgarth gods aren't very good? Ma'ar (he goes by Leareth now) said they'd assassinated him over things like inventing the printing press. Abadar likes progress and cities and thinks people ought to be rich. So maybe Ma'ar just needed a god worth trusting in.

Interesting. That...does sound like something Ma'ar would approve of. Something he and Ma'ar would have agreed on, even. 

...Velgarth's loss of knowledge during the Cataclysm included the printing press? Urtho is genuinely kind of emotional about this. That's awful.